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Tell us about your first NIN show

This was probably done before, but I can't find it.

Eleven years ago today was my first of so far only two. Reposted from another forum:

It was on the With Teeth tour. City was Orlando, venue was the TD Waterhouse Center (renamed Amway Arena at the beginning of the following year, now demolished and replaced with the Amway Center a few blocks down), opening acts were Queens Of The Stone Age and Death From Above 1979. Band lineup was Trent, Aaron, Jeordie, Alessandro, and Alex Carapetis. Some of you may be asking who that last guy is, but even I didn't know until years later. Not helped that I was repeatedly asked who the drummer was between then and me finding out that Josh Freese had taken over as drummer. This was actually my first concert. Period. It was also where I got my first ever band shirt.

As there was a hurricane the day before, I didn't know until the last minute that I still had to go to school that day. I will never forget that time I told my class that I was going to see NIN, COMPLETELY unaware that NIN has been branded "Satanic" around those parts. As a result, for better or for worse, NIN had been strongly associated with me for the remaining three and a half years of high school, including bullying from people who know absolutely nothing about NIN but went along with what others were saying just because.

My first (also my first concert ever) was in the Boston Garden, and the venue had installed and bolted seats to the entire arena floor. Trent was pissed and lay down and moaned about it during Happiness in Slavery. During Wish, the crowd went nuts and ripped up all the seats opening up the entire floor. I saw twisted, jagged, dangerous metal remnants bolted to the floor as I pushed my way to the front. Trent thanked us and was much happier for the rest of the show. A month later he came back (to Worcester) and thanked us again before playing a special encore with Adam Ant.

The Part of Texas Where Motherfuckers Actually Wear Cowboy Hats and Whatnot

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FTDS tour-October 29th, 1994, at the Fair Park Coliseum in Dallas, which i thought was funny because it's the dedicated building for the Dog Show during the state fair. The seats face each other instead of the stage. I had wanted SO bad to see NIN in May of that year, but that show was at The Bomb Factory, a club, and i wasn't old enough to get in.
The crowd was unlike anything i've seen, before or since-a sea of black clothing, steel jewelry, and palpable teen angst. These were the original NIN fans-at this point, in terms of LPs, there was PHM and the brand new TDS.
The opening acts were the Jim Rose Circus (which was like a touring circus freak show for the stage,) and a not-yet-famous Marilyn Manson. I assumed she was maybe like a dark folk singer. That show was my introduction.
They played pinion with some sort of cloth thing covering the stage, which trent eventually tore through and then broke into Mr Self Destruct. At this point, about half the crowd jumped from the seats down to the floor, en masse.
The rest of the setlist was Sin, MOTP, Piggy, Reptile, Gave Up, HiS, Eraser, Hurt, TDS, Wish, Suck, Ruiner, DII, Closer, Dead Souls, and SICNH.
The stage was again covered with a screen for Eraser, Hurt, and TDS i think. I'm pretty sure that the Hurt projections were the same ones used in the video, but another thing that really sticks out for me is these kind of shadowy steel grey and black moving landscape type of images projected during Eraser.
The lighting was unlike anything i had seen before. At that age, i had seen some pretty incredible lights at, for instance, a Rush show, but this was a relatively small venue, a band that was just hitting its stride, and furthermore, what they were doing with the lights was just different.
The sound was mind blowing. The band was supernaturally tight, even as they smashed into each other and whatnot. You could tell they spent a lot of time rehearsing.
Seeing NIN touring to promote The Downward Spiral is an experience i can't really describe. There was an air of danger about Nine Inch Nails back then that was gone by the time The Fragile era rolled around, and may or may not have existed on the PHM tour.
The whole thing was bleak, cathartic, chaotic, frightening, unapologetically masturbatory, thrilling, unifying, vindicating.
@TheBang , the crowd ripped up the floor in dallas at my second NIN show in 95 and threw it at the Melvins

I only got into NIN in 2009 right after their Wave Goodbye tour so I always thought that I was fucked. I just came late to the party and hated myself for that. Well, then 2013/2014 came and all of that didn't matter anymore.

I went to two shows, the first one being Berlin and the second one being Vienna a couple of weeks later. The venue in Berlin was pretty shitty to say the least – the stage was too small so they couldn't set up their screens, only basic lights. On top of that it was open air and the show started in broad daylight, which isn't too great either. And on top of that the crowd was pretty lame, too, a lot of talking and stuff like that.

I went with my then soon-to-be-girlfriend and we had early entry tickets and stood in the second front row. It was amazing, Trent started with Me, I'm Not and it just blew my mind. Everything went great until my girlfriend had herself pulled out by a security guy because she had breathing issues during MOTP (front row during MOTP can be pretty rough). Since she would NEVER get to the front again I had myself pulled out, too, because we wanted to go see NIN together.

It was a bummer to say the least. After that we were pretty far in the back, people weren't really into it, even more talking, meh. It was still a great show, they played a long set, they even played Various Methods of Escape, Trent said a few nice things, it was cool. But I couldn't enjoy the show the way I wanted to.

After that we decided to go see them again in Vienna. And Vienna was awesome! They played in an arena, full stage setup, great set-list (which had a few nice additions to the one we had in Berlin), they even taped the show (although we will probably never see that one) and it was an all-in-all great experience. I'm so fucking happy that we went out of our way and traveled to Vienna.

The biggest thing I learned from that is that I will try to see even more shows the next time around. Gotta take what you can get.

04/30/2000. Fragility 2.0, Montreal. Only the second concert in my life I'd ever been to.

I was up in the nosebleeds, a little to the front and the left of the band, and got a pretty nice bird's eye view. It wasn't too bad, but I had to lean heavily to my left to see the screens at all.

When Even Deeper started up, I let out an ear-piercing EEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAEEAHHHEEEAAAAH and I'm pretty sure TR put his hand up in my general direction as he started singing in a "thank you, but shut up please" gesture. I believe the couple to my right were somewhat afraid.

4/6/2000. NIN and APC. Was living in Tucson at the time and no one wanted to join me. I drove up solo. Had floor tickets. Smoked a joint with some randoms on the floor. APC fucking killed it. NIN was amazing. This is in my top 10 shows of all time for sure, number 1 being 8/23/2009 in NY at Webster Hall. Nothing will ever top that.

I first saw them in 1991 as support to GNR at Wembley Stadium. To be honest I can't remember a second of the show and I really wasn't listening as I was so excited for GNR, ha! (It was so long ago I can barely remember the rest of the show either)
My sister and friends were though and I got into NIN through a cassette tape of one side PHM, one side Gary Numan Pleasure Principle. If I could go back in time and slap myself into paying attention I would. We were right at the back of the stadium so the band were dots anyway

Jim Rose Circus and Marilyn Manson opened. I wasn't up for a GA ticket and I think it sold out before I bought mine. Decent mid-arena seat though. Manson completely blew me away. Reznor and the band did a superb set of everything I liked at the time. It was just as energetic and intense as I hoped it would be. Ears were ringing by the end of it. The shirt has survived!

The Part of Texas Where Motherfuckers Actually Wear Cowboy Hats and Whatnot

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Originally Posted by sentient

Self Destruct 11/12/1994 Louisville, Kentucky

Jim Rose Circus and Marilyn Manson opened. I wasn't up for a GA ticket and I think it sold out before I bought mine. Decent mid-arena seat though. Manson completely blew me away. Reznor and the band did a superb set of everything I liked at the time. It was just as energetic and intense as I hoped it would be. Ears were ringing by the end of it. The shirt has survived!

The night before, MTV showed an hour of Beside You in Time at 11 pm. It was the very first time I saw/heard NIN and couldn't keep my eyes off the screen. Tried to set up the trip the following morning but couldn't make it. I already liked Tool and would have fell in love with Trail of Dead a few years before it actually happened.

Didn't like AC, loved Tv On the Radio. An entire hour of stage problems later, NIN started and played a beautiful setlist with some highlights:

- Somewhat Damaged. Trent was probably furious for the lateness and for the first seconds looked everyone in the first rows in a killer way. When his eyes met mine, I probably had an idiot smile ("Wow, that's Trent!") on that disappeared in an instant, leaving me quite paralyzed.

- Something I Can Never Have. The line:

In this place it seems like such a shame
Though it all looks different now,
I know it's still the same

Was sang in a COMPLETE silence. When the instruments stopped after the chorus I remember having thought "Okay, now let's hear the usual idiots talking" and instead every single one was silent. That transition was the first and last shiver down my spine I ever got from live music.

- The Line Begins to Blur. The song that impressed me on TV two years before, unexpected on the Wave Goodbye. The bass intro really surprised me and I still have the image of that moment in my mind.

- Burn + (half of) Gave Up. A girl behind me sang the first one entirely in my ear. During Gave Up someone behind me told her to stop in a very italian way, shutting her down completely for the rest of the show. Seems rude this way, but she was very annoying.

- Survivalism. A great performance that made me finally fall in love with the song. Plus, a little boy dressed as a rapper appeared at my left, having great fun but looking too much like a pickpocketer to be believable.

Robin Finck was quite drunk and threw I don't know how many bottles of water into the crowd. The little rapper missed one because he was too short, but his position was perfect.
Before the show I was hoping for 4 songs: The Fragile, La Mer, The Day the World Went Away and The Way Out is Through. All but the last one were played, you can imagine how felt for a few days.

I didn't get into NIN until the year before when a classmate in college was telling me how great the band is and why I should check them out. He loaned me his copy of "Beside you in Time" and it changed my perception of the band completely. Getting into the band in 2007 was weird for me as I didn't understood the whole ARG concept of Year Zero and noticed there were no US dates on the tour (I know about Hawaii but I was a poor college student). Fast forward to 2008, I have become more versed with the bands discography and one day a US tour was announced.

Got my ticket and saw what is to me the greatest arena show I have ever seen. The visuals, the eccentric set list of songs, Robin slamming and throwing his guitar down cause it fucked up on "Letting You" and everything. It made a lasting impression me and ever since then I have made a commitment to catch NIN live as much as possible.

This was not only my first Nine Inch Nails concert, but my concert ever. The concert was on 10/31/1994 (Halloween) in Houston, TX and I was 13 years old. Just few days before the concert my mom had told me she had gotten me tickets to see the band and I was shocked, she was also a pretty big fan, but I don't think she knew what she had gotten herself into. The venue was at "The Summit" (now Lakewood Church) and I remember the walk to the arena so well, because it was just astonishing to me. First, everyone was dressed up for Halloween, so a lot of Crow costumes, painted faces, everyone dressed in black and girls dressed in gothic attire, a lot of Dr. Seuss type top cats and trenchcoats - I'd never seen anything like it before. There were also quite a few of protesters from various churches. Walking around the arena prior to getting the our seats, so many people wearing Marilyn Manson t-shirts. I remember thinking, who is Marilyn Manson? I didn't even know about the Jim Rose Circus before they went on stage. My mom and I found our seats and just people watched. It was pretty cool. Then Jim Rose came on stage and did just all the weird shit, I guess in today's standards it's not that crazy, but back then it was pretty incredible. Just these guys abusing themselves on stage, swinging their dick with insane amounts of weights on it. It was just something I could never even thought of ever seeing. Then Manson came on stage and it just sounded like noise, I can't say I was too impressed.

Next, was Nine Inch Nails...I can't say I remember every little detail about the setlist or every action or word that was taken place, but I do remember some key parts of it today. I know, the lights went dark, and then beginning of Mr. Self Destruct started to play, the pulsing sound - it was loud, fast and had a lot of energy - sounded terrible compared to the CD though, haha. It was a pretty good show thus far, but then things got crazy. Like I mentioned before, my Mom and I were sitting in seats about 3 rows up from general admission (so, pretty good seats), March of the Pigs starts, and when Trent Reznor screamed "March, push...crawl right up on your knees", everyone that was in rows, I don't know how far up..jumped out of their seats, rushed the security guards, knocked the barricade down and ran to the stage. The general admission was so jammed with bodies, bouncing all over the place, crowd surfing, it was a sight to see. I looked back at the at the rows of seats above us...my mom and I were the only one still in our seats. After that, I just remember bits and pieces of the show...I know tons of equipment was destroyed onstage, it seemed like as soon as a song was finished the guitar was smashed or the keyboards...it really seemed like after every single song. The next memorable moment was the video for Hurt, nearly all of us have seen it by now. The screen dropped down on the stage and just had these fantastic visuals and I remember seeing the animal rotting and the bird diving into the water, the angles of the video and the rapid of decay of an animal...it was so new to me, never had seen anything like it. It's so hard to express that now with Youtube where you can see everything, back then, for me it wasn't like that. So, it made a huge impression on me. The last thing I remember was Dead Souls playing, because I don't think I had heard the song before. I know I saw The Crow, but I guess the song didn't stick out that much to me when I saw the movie...I don't know. But during the concert, I was like what song is this? It's awesome. Near the end of the concert, so much freaking instruments were destroyed, it seemed like they went on for about 5-10 minutes just destroying stuff. I got a salt and tooth T-shirt with the NIN logo on the back. Funny though, I've seen the same shirt online for sale, but mine is different than online ones - The NIN logo is chopped up. Anyway, that's my experience.

lots of memories of cool places that don't exist any more my first
nin show was @ a club on haight st. called theI-beam across the street was aplace called the night break. which used to have sushi suday's were i saw primus. sf had so many cool live music clubs before dj's riuned live music in the city. sigh imiss those days
-louie

haight st. was so fun back then night break full moon saloon and the notorious zim zam room with bruno the martini natzi. if you ordered anything but a dry martini gin he would kick you out. We don't have that but the bar down the street does.
-louie

It was my sophomore year in high school. I wasn't able to go to LITS in Dallas the year before. It bums me out more looking at the Dallas LITS setlist (Down in It, Getting Smaller, God Given, In This Twilight, and The Line Begins to Blur.) My mom and I went to Austin to see the NINJA tour, and I remember from our seats seeing how empty the floor looked and thinking how I wish I was down there, but whatever. They opened with Mr. Self Destruct, and I was freaking out. I remember thinking holy shit, TR is right there. It was an awesome set, Downward Sprial heavy plus the only time they played Not So Pretty Now that year. Four years later, my wife (then girlfriend) and I flew up to Philly for Made in America. We were three feet from the rail, and when Trent walked on stage to start Copy of A, I had the same reaction as I did the first time I saw NIN. My wife tried to take a picture of the stupid smile I had too. Good times.

I was 16 at the time and so my friend at the time and I convinced his dad to drive us 4 hours to Minneapolis for this concert. It was sweet, seeing A Perfect Circle for the first time too. It was Maynards birthday and I remember him between songs saying something like "if you want to do something for me, go home and put on some elton john and masturbate until you pass out."

We had upper balcony seats, but with the Fragility 2.0 production, it was sweet to have a good angle on things cuz we were pretty much center. Of course the stand out of the set list was the La Mer/Great Below/Mark Has Been Made trifecta. Complicaton was sweet also, and im glad I got to see the original version of Closer performed live at least once because I think the version with the TITOT breakdown may have been performed more than the original. Anyways, One of my friends decided he was going to sneak into GA, and sure enough, we watched him do it. Both of those guys, I have compleatly lost contact with over the years.

It was awesome when I first got into collecting bootlegs, finding that tape of that show. Aside from that, Ive only ran across one other bootleg of a show ive been to that I dint record myself, and that was Rammstein in '99 in St. Paul. Ive seen Tool bootleg lists that have their Lateralus Tour shows from St. Paul and Sioux Falls, both shows I went to, but have been unable to track them down. IIRC the guy that had them just wanted to trade and not release them out to the wild. ANYWAYS.....

Originally Posted by elevenism

@somewhatdamaged your first nin show was 2 days after mine. (which makes sense-dallas show, houston show)

i, too, got the chopped up logo shirt and have been looking for one ever since i lost the OG

ive got one, its a large and too small for me, if your interested in it let me know

On the topic of tour shirts, I had one of the white fragility 2.0 shirts, the the greenish flower on the front and it just said nine inch nails, and the back was the tour dates. I made the mistake of selling it, and would love to get another if somebody has one and would part with it plz let me know.

Soundgarden was the loudest band I've ever seen up to that point, damn man, they haven't let up at all after all these years. Chris Cornell was 50 years old and giving it 100 percent, it was really impressive.

NIN came on and I swear to fucking god, despite being seated in the back (not the lawn) it was crazy for me. I've seen all these live videos and heard some live audio ever since I got into the band in 2008 and here I was experiencing it for real. I thought NIN was finished in 2009 but I guess so did everyone else. I knew the static setlist going in and was going to enjoy it anyways, but they changed it up and that was good. Trent was on top of his game during Copy of A, flying around the stage with his guitar. Frail/Wretched happened, I ain't got anything to say because you all know how that goes. Find My Way blew me away in the instrumental section due to the bass being so deep and Trent's guitar additions.

The highlight came when they did The Great Destroyer and then Eraser. I was completely blown away by seeing my two favorite NIN songs of all time. I could've just gone home after Eraser because that shit was too real. TDTWWA was some sort of emotional thing that I cannot describe. Amazing show. The visuals were great and so was the sound. What did suck though was being in the California heat in late August.